Sunday, February 6, 2011

DIY RPG Blog Sampler

Do you have an RPG blog? Are you like: Fuck yeah, it's amazing and everyone should read it! Are you like: Hey, maybe take a look, it's not bad and I kind of like my in-depth analysis of F9--Isle of the Wrecking Porpoise...

Well, either way, here's your chance.

Leave a comment with three sentences quoted directly from entries on your blog. They do not all have to be from the same entry. Then put your blog URL.

People can go here and read all the stuff, so you have a chance to try to pique their interest and show what your blog's all about...

I will keep this page accessible by putting a permalink to it over on the right above "greatest hits".

This one is from my recent post "How Jack Vance Almost Kicked Glorantha Off Its Runequest Pedestal":

The history of our hobby is littered with any number of “could haves”, “would haves”, and “should haves”. Much digital ink has been spilled lamenting the never-coming of such and such promised Great Product from the shadowy reaches of the “real” Castle Greyhawk to...well a number of things that had a Gygax label pinned to them.

Yesterday I came upon one of the stranger coulda shouldas when tracking down what ever had become of my old acquaintance Runequest.

While we watch the possible implosion of WotC and the tattering of the Dungeons & Dragons Brand as we know it, we are treated to yet another Dungeons & Dragons clone.

There is a real dearth of available adventure for a GM to run a party thru, which is probably why many (including myself for the longest time) think of Tunnels & Trolls as a SOLO play system - either in total or nearly so.

Bully Toads are large, bipedal toads known to inhabit dungeons, forests and the occasional magical wasteland.

"Whether `tis nobler in the mind to suffer the stress and worries of creating settings wholecloth, or to seek out scraps from a wealth of settings, and, by scavenging, end them."

(a 2-fer) "Well, the way I see it, Common is English (not literally, of course). What I mean by this is that a lot of the kind of events and forces that shaped the English language into what it is today will be many of the same forces that shaped the Common language."

"These creatures are known to attach themselves to the underside of ships where they will gnaw on the hull for hours at a time. This gnawing is often audible from within the ship and can be an unnerving sound when one is out upon the open sea. Such behaviors are intentionally malicious and occur most often during the winter months when the phooks are said to be irritable."

"Every few rounds, one of the insane, screaming women would split open and release a torrent of tadpoles onto the battlefield, resulting in difficult terrain and a lot of uneaten snacks on the game table."

OK! Here are three wizard-oriented sentences from old Cyclopeatron posts!

This growth manifests as a rod-like organ that floats freely in the abdominal cavities of wizards. A wizard’s Downy Pinkus grows one inch per level, so a seventh–level wizard will have a seven inch Downy Pinkus. Any rockers, including wizards, that get high on radioactive cocaine must dust off their d12 and roll for an effect.

"Jek-Mor the Hyperborean sorcerer, who is fed up with the uptight Lawful town of Canyx and their urine-flavored gin loses his temper and casts sleep upon the manlike mounts of the guards who collapse into snoring gelatinous heaps.

As the party and the guards draw their weapons and the sorcerer begins muttering an incantation fight breaks out Buzz shoots the sorcerer in the belly with his large-apertured gamma radiation pistol (purchased from Dickie Dee) before Jedediah puts a bullet into the sorcerer's skull blasting it into pieces.

In the chaos following the sorcerer's death his guards immediately surrender while the town guards of Canyx are seen cowering behind the battlements with shocked expressions."

"This is a revision of my article on using the Types of Magic as a basis for a system of Planetary Angelic Beings, though the Types could be otherwise associated, for a similar effect."

"The OSR News is produced as a service to the community and is entirely a non-commercial endeavor on my part."

"The process will continue until the MU reaches 16th level, at which point it will cease, along with most of the other weirdness, as he will have attained his destiny and become that evil manifestation which he was in communication with, all this time. "

"So then I thought, could I make up a campaign setting in the Lands of Ara (but probably on a different continent than Ara, or on a different planet in the Ara universe) using material from ELP [Emerson, Lake and Palmer]?"

"After doing some research, I'm sticking to my initial hunch that the Otyugh is heavily influenced by the Star Wars garbage monster."

"The +1 Crowbar gets a +1 bonus to certain tasks, like prying open doors and treasure chests, and functions as a +1 club in melee combat."

An ancient, rotting motel at the end of a pitted concrete lane houses this 13 room bordello of (13) vampire doxies and the madam, a 9th level doxy vampire named Nosferella.

Eyes of this type are exceedingly dangerous as they have, in addition to their other powers, the psionic abilities of a 15th level Astronaut with a PSY score of 13-18 and the ability to self destruct by detonating their internal interfogulator.

Whether by his or her own choice or under the influence of the demonic weapon, the blade bearer may take up the body of the razor's victim and at a time when the stars are properly aligned, the razor will guide the bearer's hand in the performance of a ritual lobotomy upon the sleeper.

To whit, if you make the Tarantino Cinematic RPG, it should involve lots of people sitting around and communicating who they are as people by using pop culture references when discussing matters of morality and psychology, or invoking the creative process, punctuated by periods of horrendous and blood-spattering violence.

That would make him not just the god of slaves, but also the slave god, if it is true.

It adds to that sense that wizards command and channel the very forces of the universe, and that those powers do not always enjoy it, squirming in the wizard's spiritual grasp, ready to leap out and unleash themselves if the wizard's hold should ever weaken.

"Is anyone going to claim that the Fundamental Narrative of D&D is anything but: a group of people go breaking and entering. Once inside, they divest the occupants of their possessions, usually by means of extreme violence?"

"Try to imagine the shock I felt when excavating that box and Lost Tamoachan appeared."

"If we survive this I give you my permission to beat me senseless as long as its done on dry land".

"If you want to use the Alien Ability from a previous session again, you must roll to see if the writers of the show remember that you had that power."

"I want my dozen types of Kryptonite, the Inferior Five, the original Donna Troy origin and everything else someone at some point thought was cool enough to create and someone else thought to erase from continuity in favor of an idea that didn't last half as long in anyone's memory."

...when someone says “4e sucks donkey balls because it’s not a roleplaying game!” what they usually mean is, “I like simulation and am used to D&D catering to that approach! This new D&D doesn’t and thus it fulfills my needs less!”

In the last month, a staggering 70+ works of art have been identified as having been stolen by Outlaw Press and used in their publications, as well as a large laundry list of other kinds of IP theft.

“And can you get my girlfriend's face out of your twat please?” - Tommy Blacktoes to the succubus Seyanna

I'm looking forward to statting up the six mouthed goo monster. I mean, does it really get much better than that?

In line with my recent posts and along with some of my past posts, I really feel like I want to build some alternative magic systems for use with Old School Fantasy systems (read D&D and clones).

Old School rule sets are like an old Volkswagon. They are infinitely customizable, hold up pretty well, can be somewhat clunky at times, have some sort of strange allure to them, etc. I do not want to throw out the entire D&D system.

What are the six elements that compose a scene in the context of a tabletop RPG?

Inside you can find information on how to describe magical swords, what treasure containers could exist, how to generate hoards containing items such as art, gems, jewelry, coins, goods, furnishings, and clothing as well as how to describe in detail each of the items above.

(The following is technically one sentence)The free 44 page work contains:

* A description of psionic ability and how it is acquired * A listing of psionic attacks and defenses and how to handle psionic combat * A huge listing of powers, including devotions, sciences, and arts * Psionic items, including rules for the creation of psionic ego items and artifacts * A fully featured, 20 level, player character psionic class * Psionic schooling tables * Several packages and kits * A psionic combat quick reference sheet * Psionic encounters reference * Two psionic power reference sheets (one for strict 1st edition play, and one for our slightly modified system) * Art * And more!

Below I create a brief Appendix V, being an incomplete, but compelling collation of my more memorable encounters with cinematic bloodsuckers.

Forged by Dwarven Mastersmiths, wrapped in Black Dragon hide, and enchanted by Elven Highmasters at Ervir, this battle axe is a powerful weapon built for one target; Black Dragons.

Movies such as Event Horizon and games such as Dark Heresy demonstrate that otherworldly horrors and near future settings can work in cinema and gaming, so, while the term itself may never have caught on culturally, the blended genre is certainly successful and pertinent.

The Fabled Lands blog started out talking about a series of solo gamebooks I wrote in the mid-90s, grew to include an RPG I published ten years earlier, and nowadays meanders around the boundaries where role-playing and fantasy meet up with things like novels, comic books and everyday life.

"Logic sits in the corner without a dance partner, disapproving and ignored."

"In terms of pedigree, this Serpent King is no itty-bitty grass snake but the kind of adamant-scaled, century-battened, monster wyrm that could send Thor hurtling through a couple of skyscrapers."

"A tentacled monster that feeds on beer rather than madness, luckily."

"As a public service to Ridley Scott, here are The Rules of a Robin Hood story."

"As the name implies, the crusader is out to further some cause that he believes in--ending crime, converting the infidels, saving the environment, killing a huge fucking shark, whatever."

"While most Sword & Sorcery characters do have at least some sort of moral code by which they live, most would be considered criminals and murderers by today's standards, and many are morally ambiguous even according the the less civilized standards of the worlds they live in."

"but is it possible to run a non-violent adventure (or even, gasp!, a campaign)?"

"There was once a magic-user who roamed the stars, occasionally visiting the world and putting right the wrongs wrought by Chaos; until one day he just disappeared, never to be seen again, all but forgotten."

"The Flail of Biting Insults was created by a bitter craftsman who hated everybody."

"The party of "brave" adventurers has just slain the massive, bloated Rat-King, Pubus Byle. From his coffers they liberate...a small fortune in gold coins [and] a tarnished iron ring, on it hang eight mismatched keys..."

"The party chose to continue their delve [into] the mines... After spending a day exploring the mines, the party found something of interest...They moved into the remains of an ancient library. There, they met a crazed dwarf..."

"My concept is that this is an alternate world, in which the only previous roleplaying game of any sort has been Braunstein, and I have never actually played in that but have only heard about it (which is the case). I have decided to figure out how to do this with the WRG Ancients and Medieval rules, but I am also interested in giving the players some control over their characters, giving the characters random or semi-random strengths and weaknesses that allow the players to make decisions as to their goals and so forth, rather than being assigned goals."

"Happily, at least at first, I don't have to make many huge design choices, though, since I'm still looking at figuring out a way to play WRG Ancients and Medieval, just with single, individual figures instead of units of up to 50 figures with each figure representing 5 or 20 individuals."

"Contrary to what you may be thinking, this isn’t some sort of goggle-eyed manifesto of Background Uber Alles – I detest rules which are burdened by background/setting instead of evocative of those things."

"It requires a game writer able to sublimate their own ego and admit that what they have is not an act of Individual Genius Creativity and more a tissue of references and influences that’s mainly made special by how they’re played out at table."

"An epic level character who does not transcend either becomes like a god made flesh – jaded and potent, curdled with entropy, the sort of thing that adventurers are normally working to destroy or overthrow - or falls from that high and lofty place and begins again."

"The bane of hunters, grave diggers and the undead, Carrion Stones are sentient rocks that have developed a hunger for dead flesh - the smell of death draws them from miles around, where they gather to crush the dead beneath their weight and slake their thirst for blood."

"Multimonk / Echozealot – You are a monk able to split into multiple bodies to whoop ass (duh)."

"My idea is, the Player doesn’t just have an ethical stance toward the PC, and the PC toward the goblins/Steam Dukes/oil monsters/irradiated giant eels in the game: The Player also has some kind of relationship toward the story the DM is trying to tell."

"The Vultor Imperium – the terrible Lunar Empire of the Vulture-Men [always hyphenated] who hate the men-men of Luna—and presumably, knew they any, of earth…"

"Aeon, depicted as a lion-headed man seated on a throne, bearing two keys. Aeon is after the mythical figure of Mithras combined with Zeus."

"The kraken’s cave originally had a “fail-safe” device (built by the Mer) to collapse the caves if the beast ever got out of control. Kallisti has of course taken over the Kraken, and has re-keyed the fail-safe and turned it into a puzzle."

"So it came to be we decided our icy crystalline moon was the home of the oldest race in the campaign- the Shard. The Shard are both the hyper-intelligence and psionically gifted crystals (using the Shardmind, but with restrictions on armor and weapons) as well as the stone-bodied goliaths. "

I'm not really "in the gaming loop", which will prob mean (1) I'm going to post some things that are going to make readers say "Uh, yeah, that's been posted on like, six thousand Blogs already..." and (2) I will on occasion, by virtue of my sheer ignorance and outsider perspective, post some weirdness that no one has thought up yet.

Wildly swinging dice rolls and spastic gesticulations do not mix well with open containers.

It really doesn't get any better than role-playing an alcoholic Quasit!

"So, there are a few rules most cutter should follow: never short-change a Devil, never question the Lady of Pain, and never, ever gamble with anyone involved with a Power of Trickery."

"For a more high-powered game, there are the Dwarven Reclamators - squads of Dwarves, clad in the finest armour, weilding terrifying weapons, on a mission from God Himself to reclaim the ancient relics of their kind, to remove threats to their fortress homes, and to generally be fucking terrifying."

"Very well, gentlemen, it is settled. Let us ride forth, locate these so-called hobgoblins, and stab them profusely until gold comes out."

The bordello makes extra money via contract assassination; the mattress in Room Four is actually a mimic.

However, the Finding-Chicken has been trying to get home for over a century, and it may not complete its quest any time soon; which is unfortunate for the residents of Sullah-Saloo, as the lost princess possesses important intelligence regarding the hens’ ongoing war with a race of extradimensional teleporting weasels.

Once again, the rules for sacred trials by combat have changed. They now require the participation of terrestrial jellyfish.

Women kidnapped by merrow gradually transform into large catfish. Merrow lose interest in their mates and set them free when they lose their human features.

The mummies left by the isle's previous inhabitants, ignorant of the new goddess, are sending blasphemous dreams to Olhydra-fearing islanders. A young priest wishes to proselytize to them and convince them to change their ways. The only remaining mummies are tucked away in remote, demon-infested crypts.

Above all else, we're there to have fun and that should influence every decision at the table.

Sages (retired archaeologists and adventurers with access to a decent library and a wealth of acquired knowledge on magical artifacts) will charge 100g to attempt to identify weapons, armor, or wands and 200g for jewelry (like rings and necklaces) or wondrous items.

Belching or farting to relieve the pressure will result in the creation of a 6' diameter air-filled bubble that can hold up to two man-sized passengers and lazily floats on (as Floating Disc) at a speed of 30' per round.

The trouble with 4th Edition D&D is the trouble with 1st Edition AD&D, the books are being written to sell more books. They don't resolve "problems" with earlier editions, they just keep publishing books so you can buy them. They (Wizards of the Coast) want you to buy more books, that's why they "revamp" the game periodically, change everything around so you have to buy the new books, except that you don't ever have to buy another book as long as you live; all the rules you will ever need are available for free on the internet.

"Some scholars doubt that the top is actually made of something as plain as ebony and gold because no matter how horrific the implosion caused by the immediate evacuation of air from the room, the top always appears to be in pristine condition."

"Since the ogre's junk weighed less than ten pounds, the the wizard promptly picked it up with a Mage Hand and imbued it with a Light spell. We named it Mortimer."

"Now I drink deepFrom this black cupAnd with it dies my trust (Trust no one)"

Every time I flesh out a random sitting room, I fully expect chairs to be thrown, tables to be lit on fire, and baddies to be skewered with coat racks. Variety truly is the spice of life, and best embraced by beating cultists with splintering chairs.

When you have never failed, with your stack of special powers and second winds and action points, you don't know how great, and how lucky, it is to win.

Key features of this map are (1) the staircase which appears to go up but actually goes down (2) The bridge with an invisible section (3) The rotating dungeon section with a staircase: positioned in one of four positions when the party enters it is rotated to another position randomly and (8) a secret chamber only enterable by an underwater passage.

With my newly created hex overlay and H. C. Darby's Domesday England, Cambridge University Press 1977, I decided to check the village density of Norman England.

P.P.S. I have spent so much time on the Piasa bird I am now listed on page two of the google search. This of course necessitates posting of even more of the pictures I have found.

(abstract for a new class: The Changeling) "Raised by tricky Elves (they stole him, to begin with) he comes around like a Disney incarnation of Prince Charming: always smiling, always rescuing damsels in distress, always popular at parties and sooner or later he disappears into the dawn, leaving behind broken hearts and the question "Where oh where did the fascination come from?!". Being a classic hedonist he loves to enjoy life and beauty, fighting evil is just a way for him to become famous (and kick ugly people). He likes Elves and knows what's good for you."

"My players in the early days were big on thieves and assassins, as well as Opal Starr - a NPC fighter/magic-user/thief that only a the fevered mind of a pudgy adolescent raised on Elric, Conan and Boris Vallejo art could have created."

"From there, it flows down into a stone trough and into a special house where the water flows over the naked breasts of a beautiful young maiden."

"A secret order of Ogre Maji from the east are performing unspeakable rites and rituals to invoke the material form of Rirakath the Gorger - Mother of Ogre-Kind."

At one point, the Rimeplate was in the hands of Caliph Perviz IV, who reportedly made one of his bodyguards wear the armor at all times, just in case the Caliph ever wanted a cold drink.

After the amulet has been worn for a week, the bearer's eyes will be yellowed and reptilian, and remain so even if the amulet is lost or removed.

During chargen, you may pick one rule from another edition of D&D or one of its cousins like WFRP, BRP, etc. to apply to your character in some fashion (alignment tongues, healing surges, a feat, etc.).

From Second Sight: "To the second sight, magic-users radiate the presence of their prepared spells and enchanted items crackle with energy or leak glittering seepage."

From Solipsistic Hexes: "What this does is pull the wilderness into a loose mesh similar to a point-crawl, but with more enforced structure (as there will always be six adjacent nodes at any given location)."

From Gravity Sinister Golems: "However, as essentially platforms for consciousness, golems are also susceptible to other influences, as was learned when the first banished lich spirit figured out that a golem was a perfect foothold in the material world."

Burning Wheel, on the other hand, was an arcane tome of beautifully sentimentalized roleplaying theory and a character creation process that I am still hesitant to attempt lest I dot one "i" too many and end up accidentally summoning a demon.

Now, those sentences sound wonderful, fun, possibly tedious, and slightly like a twisted version of a Norman Rockwell painting done by Edvard Munch

But for now, my little murder hobos are far more terrifying than your murder hobos.

It also informed us not to leave the chamber, relating that a public management platoon had been dispatched to ensure a joyful and seamless orientation and induction into the happy halls of Alpha Complex.

An inn named after Bella Lugosi, a friendly well-dressed gaucho gunfighter contact, an inscrutable veiled patron dressed in aging black finery with a map and rumours of a mysterious device; what could possibly go wrong?

Yes, but I will try to foreshadow just how really really bad for your health said creature or situation is, like how even the really tough NPCs ran like little girls when the Vampire appeared.

"The angles twist and the geometry buckles under the barometric pressure of anti-life. "

"“If a ghost is a ghost of pleasure it may desire nothing more than to fill its cavities with dirt and may try to do the same to you, not because it wants to hurt you, but because it needs every open place within you to be packed with dirt because that just feels so good."

"Looking for something: friend (missing quite some time), food, a drink, cigarettes or other illicit fun, a secret club, a way across the wall to find some rumored item of power to bring a dead friend back to life"

"G-nomes are the descendants of pre-Apocalypse gnomes, and embrace genetic engineering with the same enthusiasm (and sometimes explosive results) as their ancestors embraced mechanisms and before that alchemy."

"In essence XP for loot makes D&D a game about recovering treasure, not fighting monsters, and that’s a huge difference in how things play out and what strategies make sense."

"These are terrible, terrible things to force the player to do in the middle of every exciting situation, wrenching the players out of any immediate visceral reaction to the what’s happening in the fiction and forcing them to consider long-term character goals and emphasizing the fact that its fiction at the worst possible moment by making potentially exciting twists and developments provisional upon the players’ decision about whether to spend resources to prevent it."

"In the twilight of the sorcerer lords, The Submerged Spire was the jewel of the Shattered Isles. Now, its forlorn spire the roost of seagulls, its secrets slumber beneath the waves." [Complete underwater dungeon]

"Children lie patiently in wait in upper storied windows with long curved hooks; should they snag the hat of a Censor from above, then they win the right to subject him to humiliating punishments in front of jeering crowds." [Festival of the Sybarites]

"Summoning presents an opportunity for players to probe the hidden black places of the world, dimly glimpsed by human knowledge."

When three thousand years ago, the flames of the Black Dragon Deirregex rolled down his fortress mountain they burned away all compassion, clarity, fortitude, and insight, and left only Sundrgast and Kaldr Hust, the Cities of Poison and Bone. Sundrgast, where the long-armed snail-men toil in malice to grow their yellow master a fitting bride, and Kaldr Hust, where the kenku dance in dim glass palaces the flitting dance to please their twice-blind mother, seek equally and incessantly the Diamond Heart of Deirregex. For to gift the dragon's diamond heart, worshipped now in His White Dungeons by albino hyena-men and midnight salamanders, and recovered each millennium by the Nightmare Paladin who sits dreaming between the paws of Great Deirregex, is to incur a doom upon the recipient, so that, each hating the other, Kaldr Hust and Sundrgast long to trap their brother city in the inescapable fate of THE BLACK DRAGON'S DIAMOND HEART.

Like a hunting falcon, a warg spider must never be allowed to go hungry.

Anyone on the edge of death in these conditions may be approached by an avatar of Ik'tik'buboe in the shape of an enormous crab with seven serene, human faces.

Perhaps even more dangerously, the scales of the Doomsday Moth’s great wings are dangerously mind-effecting, the scintillating dust that follows in their wake in delicate crystalline streams causes paralysis, madness, and vividly horrific hallucinations.

Their more traditionally civilized neighbors consider this superstition a great convenience as the Mudmen have lost none of their martial spirit and would undoubtedly cause all sorts of mischief were they to wander freely along the Spine or, worse yet, peddle their superior crockery in the markets of Gaxen Kane.

“Justice is a dish best served by an army of waiters over a number of courses, accompanied by complimentary wine. The courses are of course allegories for corrective beatings and the wine is just wine, we all need wine.”

"In most cases, however, animal characters will have to gain a magical item's or weapon's benefits by eating it, either partially or completely (depending on both the size of the item and the size of the character)."

"Thus, an old-school fantasy RPG about animal characters can revive Ultravision, and make it better! "

"A raven's favorite food is the eyes of the dead; they feel it honors the fallen by passing their dying sight onto another, becoming the basis of stories that will perpetuate memories of the dead long after they are gone."

In a silent bell tower near the Carazzo, it is said, something somewhat like a spider sits and spins, and around the tower sometimes lost and voiceless children can be found: and unlike in the rest of the city, stray cats there are rare.

in 17th century France Dijon had the exclusive right to make mustard, and this kind of licensing is also the kind of thing people intrigue over all the time. Explosive or flammable mustard is clearly also something you need in your game.

Eventually these things lead not to death but to am irrecoverable collapse that is basically equivalent – coma (stamina) or catatonia (sanity). In the Starving Lands, death is not the only fate that ends you.

In cases of great import like peace negotiations or marriage contracts, professional ivorywrights (always part of a retinue) will inspect the other leaders teeth in front of a court assembled to insure that no glamors or false teeth obscure the truth.

The ozone in this instant almost condenses on the tongue, an acrid taste, alien yet reminiscent of vomit.

It was packed with wall to wall fans, industry heavy weights, jovial foreigners and one of the cleanest party vibes I had felt in a while.

True to all rules-lite systems, the DM is required to embellish the sparse rules with the flavor of the genre you wish to play.

Some features of the Hard Boiled genre include its simple morality of good versus evil, masked and cloaked heroes and heroines, devious villains and their schemes, gun-wielding desperados, cliffhanger endings, weird science, and a world still lush with unexplored places and lost races.

"People like to say that Gandalf doesn't count as a player character because he's one of the Maiar in human form and is essentially a supernatural being, but that doesn't make people want to play a character like him any less -- and fantasy roleplaying is all about playing the kinds of characters who inspire you to want to walk in their worlds."

"If you don't have time, desire, or knowledge enough to sift through dozens of soundtracks on YouTube, I've got you covered -- here's my ultimate D&D Ambient Background Music playlist, carefully curated with all of the above in mind: D&D Ambient Background Music"

"There was such realism in what was presented that my imagination was able to create the sensation that there was a ton of stuff that wasn't presented but which existed; not knowing things is the key to immersion.